The Nigerian Government has said that it is going to work with the Actors Guild of Nigeria (AGN) to attract foreign investors into the country’s film space and also diversify the economy.
This was disclosed by Minister of Foreign Affairs, Geoffrey Onyeama, in a meeting with the AGN on Friday in Abuja.
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The Minister said that the contributions of entertainment to the economy should not be understated, as it played a significant role in growing Nigeria’s economy and soft power.
- “Ministry of Foreign Affairs has a role in partnering with Nollywood because very clearly, the creative industry plays a very important role, not just in the culture of a country, but in its economy. We know the percentage of America’s GDP that is contributed by the creative industry. I believe that the module of the Nollywood industry is what holds the greatest hope for the country. Because, we see a spontaneous creation of a whole economic sector, without any input from government but the efforts of practitioners.”
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He praised Nigeria’s film industry for creating its own niche which has been used as a template for other African film industries to follow.
- “What the industry has achieved is quite phenomenal and should be a template for other sectors and it should give us hope, notwithstanding where we are economically. We will be happy to partner with you to further promote Nollywood internationally and there are different ways that we can work collaboratively together to draw a roadmap of how we can work together to achieve value addition.”
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What you should know
- The FG has also marked Nigeria’s film industry as a means to diversify the economy away from oil.
- Nairametrics reported in September that the Federal Government had inaugurated a Steering Committee on the Commercialization of the Nigerian Film Corporation (NFC), with the aim of making Nigeria’s film industry a continental entertainment power.
- Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed, said the NFC would be repositioned, as the FG had engaged the services of a Business Development Consultant to conduct due diligence on the corporation and the sector, to recommend a strategy that was suitable for its reform and commercialization.
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